Autocar Awards 2017 winners revealed

The annual Autocar Awards honour the best driver's cars you can buy right now, as well as the most influential people in the motor industry...

What Car? team

24 May 2016

Autocar's Britain's best driver's car awards celebrate the very best cars you can buy if driving enjoyment is your top priority. For the first award, Autocar named its favourite real-world performance car, which must cost less than £30,000

As its name suggests, the ST200 is based on the Ford Fiesta ST, which we named as our favourite hot hatch at the most recent What Car? Awards. The regular Fiesta ST already offers plenty of power and great handling, but the ST200 model gives you 197bhp for truly heady performance.

The regular Porsche 911 is among our favourite sports cars because we love its agile handling and everyday usability. This lighter R version, though, gets a powerful 4.0-litre six-cylinder petrol engine, and even though it's designed more for the road than the race track, it's among the very best cars in both cases.

Autocar readers picked this convertible Mini as their favourite used car, primarily because it's great to drive and offers good looks. Plus, it can now be bought for around half of its original price, and for less than £10,000 you can get a 1.6-litre Cooper model on your driveway.

The current Volkswagen Golf GTi is one of our favourite hot hatches, but it's the original GTI which Autocar readers voted as having changed motoring for the better. Having started life as a niche, the GTI today is a true icon among car lovers.